Starborne (Hitchiker's) Guide to the Galaxy - Advanced Map Mechanics
Introduction Compliments to Tristanvds for a well thought out guide for everyone. The Starborne map is something totally underestimated. It cannot be seen at 19 identical hexagons smashed next to each other. The idea of calling sectors hexagons is even doubtful. There are beautiful pieces of complexity and perfection in the map that can only be found with care and time. However, if you just played this game it will not be relevant. This guide isn’t a guide for people that don’t know the basics. This guide is based on deep theory and planning. This guide can be a key to victory when interpreted and used well, but it can also be a guide to total failure when people don’t read and understand it well. The Starborne map isn’t explained anywhere, we’re meant to live and play with it. Nobody plans on it, nobody gives it a good thought, nobody looks further at the map after the found their 19-Commerce Hub spot, nobody looks further after they planned their 2nd-Nth station. This can be changed. The Starborne map is extreme and pre-plan-able . This guide will tell you everything you need to pre-plan your server. Advanced Map Mechanics I’m starting this section with a controversial statement that might get me an opposition: “The 19 sectors are NOT identical.” Yeah, some might be, but certainly not all. To understand why that previous statement is true, we’ve got to take a look at the condition that was previously set in Map: “Let us start by imagining a map without players or bots.” This condition means that we aren’t looking at where people spawn in at which time. For those that think, “But since Tristanvds also mentions bots in his condition those might be different too!” I've got bad news, bots that aren’t lvl 1 marauders are identically located in every sector. However, we will look at the spawning of players that is the advanced and (the part I like) the part to plan. Spawning Stars and Orientation: Identical Forget what I said about stars previously, not every star is identical. They aren’t just another skin and name but the same mechanic. There are 2 types of stars, spawning stars and random stars. Spawning stars are, like the name suggests, the stars that players spawn around in a fixed pattern (and order!!!). Random stars are, like the name suggests, stars that don’t make any sense. They seem randomly smashed on the map and are almost always inside the territory on NPC’s. These stars also don’t have players spawning around them in a fixed pattern. Since every spawning star has the same spawning location and order we can map out those orders: spawning_locations_around_a_star.png|Spawning Locations Around A Star spawning_order_around_a_star.png|Spawning Order Around A Star This can be rotated by a factor of ⅙ of a full rotation (or 60° or ⅓ℼ, other way of saying the same). It can however not be mirrored. The orange line in the second picture is drawn to show the “orientation” of the spawning star. This orientation will be shown in other pictures of sectors as well to clarify in what order people spawn in around that star. Star orientation is identical for each sector, meaning that the same star in another sector has the same orientation. Sectors Coming Together: Not Identical We’ve seen that spawning order around stars is always identical. But there still exists a difference between stars in sectors. The order that they are picked. Let’s just take a look at the map of spawning stars on the right here (with orientation). NEEDS PICTURE This is identical for every sector! However what is not identical is the order that stars are picked!!! This map of Libra numbers the stars in the order that they are picked to spawn players: NEEDS PICTURE This map is the same, but then made for hydra, it has an entirely different order: NEEDS PICTURE This means that the first person to spawn into Libra gets another spot than the first person to spawn into Hydra or any other sector. Though there are some limits, for example, every sector has 6 “rings” of 5 stars. It fill ring by ring from the dyson to the outer ring. This means that when you hit random to choose a sector, you actually get to choose between just 5 spot (though some spots will be the twin of the other, therefore I count them as one). This also means that when you’re the first person to spawn in, you can choose which of the five spawning locations you prefer, or maybe even which of the 19 spawning orders and places you’d like for your alliance. Everything can be planned, as long as the map is known!